Writing about Painting

Years ago, while viewing a group show in a gallery in New York, I paused in front of a painting. I can’t remember now what it looked like, but I do remember the little biographical blurb printed next to it. It contained the shortest artist statement I’ve ever read. “I don’t know what my paintings are about and I don’t want to know.”

That dismissive little statement is the opposite of what one usually finds in artist statements. They’re more often littered with artspeak and designed to make the artist sound like he knows perfectly well what he’s doing all the time and why. Objectives of inquiry are well defined. The technical means of achieving these objectives are laid out like some studio recipe. And even if the work process is described as intuitive and spontaneous, the statement often makes it seem predictive.

Pierre Bonnard once said, “It’s not about painting from life. It’s about bringing life to the painting.” To that, I add that the life you bring to the painting can only be your own. And for me, that life comes with a whole lot of questions. Questions I don’t seem able to answer. (Though I will confess that I had more answers when I was younger!) Questions like, who am I, really? Why am I here, and what does being here mean? Why is this or that happening in my life or happening in the world? Where is all this going? Why am I attracted to these particular shapes, techniques, and colors? The list goes on and on. And since I can’t remove these questions from my life (nor do I want to), they are a big part of what I bring to a painting.

Like most artists, I’ve always found artist statements to be a chore to write. And for many reasons. One of the biggest reasons is that my life, and hence, my work, is always in a state of flux. I’ve written things about my painting before that I later regretted or found embarrassing because they no longer reflected what I was doing. And I didn’t want anybody to read that stuff. Me, talking like I knew what I was doing!

And yet, I still like the idea of artist statements. I understand their value in terms of giving viewers a footing for approaching the work. I have read a good bit of artists' writings and artist quotes. I admire artists who can do their work and also write clearly about it. I really wish I could write like them. Robert Motherwell and Gerhard Richter are a couple of favorites. And yet, Richter writes, “To talk about paintings is not only difficult but perhaps pointless too. You can only express in words what words are capable of expressing-- what language can communicate. Painting has nothing to do with that.” A funnier way of saying that is Terry Allen’s remark that "Talking about art is like trying to French kiss over the telephone."

Words are windows through which we see places, people, things, situations, ideas, perceptions, and concepts. The better the writing, the clearer the understanding. But painting requires no such window. The experience of a painting is immediate and direct. Words about the painting are helpful only if one is already engaged with it, already feeling something. Only then can they be of any help in providing some clues as to what’s going on. A picture might be better than a thousand words, but, certainly, a thousand words do not make a picture better.

Richard Diebenkorn once wrote, “I can never accomplish what I want- only what I would have wanted had I thought of it beforehand.” That sentence is as honest as his work is powerful and is one of the most compelling artist statements I’ve ever read.

I’m no Diebenkorn, but I will conclude here with part of an email I sent a few years back to Darrell Bourque, a two-time Poet Laureate of Louisiana and a dear friend of mine. We were discussing a large painting I had just completed.

“The larger-sized canvases are, in some ways, more rewarding.  Their size suggests they are grander accomplishments.   And I feel that when I stand in the presence of a new large painting.  

But with them, I have to wade through shades of intimidation and self-doubt on the way.  Every time I start a painting I know I will ultimately succeed.  All I have to do is look around at all the completed work.  

Despite this, there are some days when I do next to nothing for hours, only a mark here or a change of color for a shape there. The process of painting for me is not a smooth trajectory.  Instead, it's more a series of fits and starts, long periods of wondering what I'll do next, followed by sudden lurches of activity.

And the lurching does not always mean forward progress.  Sometimes it’s a sudden undoing of passages previously painted.  Worse still, sometimes it's the sudden undoing of things I liked, things I was hoping to protect. 

Ultimately, though, it always works out. I always know that it will, but in the throes of painting, I can emotionally lose sight of that fact.  I can feel a bit like a fraud.  Like I’m not as good as I like to think I am, and I’ve just been lucky enough with what I’ve done to hide the truth. So far.

Fortunately, these doubts don't displace everything else.  They float next to and along with feelings of confidence that I'm for real, that I can do this.  Every completed work brings back into clear view, with magical clarity, that I am a real artist.  Again, somehow, I found my way into the zone.  Again, I somehow became a funnel.  I don't know, even after four decades of painting, how to turn on the faucet that controls it.  But it turns on.  And off.  And on.  I don't understand how it works.  I can sometimes feel less like an artist turning on the faucet and more like the faucet being turned on by I don't know what.

How could I have doubted, the new painting seems to ask!  I don't know.  It feels like some kind of sin against myself that I did.  A new painting makes me feel like maybe I'll never doubt again!  How could I?  Just look!!

But I know I will.  It's what happens.  I've learned these are the emotions you sometimes encounter as you navigate the corridors of the maze of creativity.  And the larger paintings can feel like larger mazes.

Thank you for seeing my paintings.  And for the kinship they and your poetry have brought us into.”

Mar 20, 2019

And, if I may, one more quote from Gerhard Richter: “My paintings are wiser than I am.”